Emailing: First U.S. vessel arrives at Port-au-Prince - Haiti earthquake- msnbc.com.htm

January 14, 2010

Skip navigation

Â·

[ ][]

Â·

MSN Home

|

Â·

Mail

Â·

More

o

Hotmail

o

Messenger

o

My MSN

o

Download IE8

o

Airfares & Travel

o

Autos

o

Careers & Jobs

o

Cooking

o

Dating & Personals

o

Entertainment

o

Games

o

Health & Fitness

o

Horoscopes

o

Lifestyle

o

Local

o

Maps & Directions

o

Money

o

Movies

o

Music

o

News

o

Real

Estate/Rentals

o

Shopping

o

Sports

o

TV

o

Weather

o

White Pages

o

Wonderwall

o

Yellow Pages

o

MSN

MORE VIDEO

Thousands

feared dead in Haitian quake

Jan.

14: Two million people were within 10 miles of the magnitude 7.0 earthquakeâ€™s

epicenter in Haiti, and authorities are struggling to conduct rescue and

recovery operations. Ann Curry reports from Port-au-Prince.

Haitiâ€™s president,

first lady left homeless

Aerial view of the

horror in Haiti

Clinton: â€˜Weâ€™re

doing everything we canâ€™

Survivors â€˜OKâ€™ as

they take in catastrophe

Your tweets about the Haiti quake

1.

Loading the latest postsâ€¦

Source: Twitter. For the latest, follow @breakingnews

Slideshow

[Launch]

Devastation

The

Caribbean island is devastated by a 7.0-magnitude quake and dozens of

aftershocks.

more photos

INTERACTIVE

[Launch]

History of Haiti

View

key dates of the Caribbean nation.

msnbc.com news

services

updated 8:25 p.m. ET Jan. 13,

2010

WASHINGTON - As the U.S. advanced its massive military

response to aid survivors of Haitiâ€™s earthquake, devastation greeted the first

Coast Guard cutter crew to pull into Port-au-Prince on Wednesday.

There were collapsed piers, toppled cranes and

submerged shipping containers, Cmdr. Diane Durham, commander of the cutter

Forward, told NBC News. Flames flickered in the distance on land.

â€œCatastrophic destruction,â€ she said when asked to

describe the landscape.

Story continues below â†“

advertisement | your ad here

Grim

scenes didn't end there.

A helicopter sliced overhead. Inside the aircraft,

critically injured personnel from the U.S. embassy were being rushed to

Guantanamo for medical care, she told NBC News.

â€œIt is hard to look out in this harbor and see a

building that has not been affected,â€ she told The New York Times, â€œfrom the

waterfront up the hills to the larger buildings.â€

â€œEverybody in this city has been hit,â€ she added.

As the cutter crew was brief by their Haitian

counterparts, the difficulty of the mission became clearer. An estimated 2,000

survivors had turned out for medical help at the Haitian Coast Guard facility.

Armada deployed to help

Officials said Navy ships, helicopters, transport planes and a 2,000-member

Marine unit were either on the way to the impoverished nation or likely to

begin moving soon.

Video

[Launch]

State Dept. plan

Jan.

13: State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley discusses the effort under way

to get assistance to the quake zone.

The Daily Rundown

Gen. Fraser, head of U.S. Southern Command,

said that one of the U.S. Navy's large amphibious ships will likely head to

Haiti with a Marine expeditionary unit aboard. Fraser said other U.S. military

forces are on alert, including a brigade, which includes about 3,500 troops.

Fraser said during a news conference with other U.S.

officials that the Pentagon is " seriously looking at " sending

thousands of Marines to assist with disaster relief efforts and security in

Haiti.

President Barack Obama pledged earlier Wednesday

" a swift, coordinated and aggressive " effort to help the people

of Haiti overcome a " cruel and incomprehensible " tragedy. "

The president said the relief effort is gearing up

even as the U.S. government is working to account for Americans who were on the

island nation when the disaster struck late Tuesday afternoon.

Dispatching troops

The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged

country within the next few days to either help with emergency aid distribution

or enforce law in order in conjunction with U.N. peacekeepers already there,

Fraser said.

The general said that a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS

Carl Vinson, is also heading from Norfolk, Va., to the area and should arrive

Thursday afternoon after a stop off Naval Station Mayport in Florida to pick up

helicopters, crews and supplies.

The USS Bataan, carrying Marines from the 22nd Marine

Expeditionary Unit, USS Fort McHenry and USS Hall were ordered to get

under way as soon as possible, and more vessels were ordered to stand ready to

assist.

The USS Higgins from Naval Station San Diego was

scheduled to arrive off the coast of Haiti on Thursday to provide logistical

services for Coast Guard helicopters.

The dispatched troops would aim to keep the peace in

the event of post-disaster unrest as part of a larger international effort

overseen by the United Nations, whose peacekeeping operation headquarters was

destroyed in the quake. About 100 U.N. personnel are believed to be trapped in

the ruins of he building.

" It's going to be our assessments that are going

to determine, in conjunction with (the U.N. mission) and the other

international partners who are there, how best to deal with any security

situations that come up, " Fraser said.

Video

[Launch]

'Unwavering

support' vowed

Jan.

13: Citing compassion and a " history that binds us togher, "

President Obama vows to help Haiti.

NBC News

" We don't know precisely what the situation is on

the ground, " he added. " So we're leaning forward to provide as much

as capability as quickly as we can to respond to whatever the need is when we

get there. "

More immediately, Fraser's Miami-based Southern

Command is also dispatching a team of 30 people to Haiti to support relief

efforts in the aftermath of the earthquake and make way for additional military

aid.

Officials said two C-130 aircraft were departing

Wednesday for Haiti with the team of military engineers, operational planners,

communications specialists and a command and control group. The Air Force is

sending people to provide air traffic control and operations at the

Port-au-Prince airport.

Evacuations, deployments

Coast Guard helicopters early Wednesday evacuated four injured U.S. Embassy

personnel to a hospital at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Southcom did

not release their names.

Fraser said the military is also sending units to get

Port-au-Prince's airport secured and operating again. The airport is considered

" operational, " he said, but the facility's tower and other operations

were damaged.

Fraser appeared with U.S. Agency for International

Development administrator Rajiv Shah, the official named by Obama to coordinate

American efforts in Haiti.

Click

for related content

U.S.

husband pulls wife from Haiti rubble

Quake leaves Haiti

'worse than a war zone'

Are

you there? Help us report, if you can safely do so

Want

to help? List of charities

Interactive:

What causes earthquakes

Timeline:

A history of Haiti

The president called upon all nations to join in

helping stricken Haitians.

Obama spoke Wednesday in the White House Diplomatic

Reception Room. Later, spokesman Gibbs told reporters the president had

no plans to go to Haiti.

Video

[Launch]

Aid worker in

Haiti: â€˜Whole world came undoneâ€™

Jan.

13: Humanitarian worker Luke Renner felt the intense earthquake in

Cape Haitian, on the north coast of the island.

Today show

The president, who has been involved in ensuring a

quick response since Tuesday night, said in a statement from the White House

Diplomatic Reception Room that one of the government's top priorities is to

quickly locate U.S. embassy employees and their families, as well as all other

American citizens living and working in Haiti. He urged Americans trying to

locate family members to contact the State Department at 1-.

Obama sought to show a swift and united disaster

response with the United States as an assertive leader, but he said the effort

must be an international one. " We are reminded of the common humanity that

we all share, " he said, with Vice President Joe Biden at his side.

The president outlined a series of steps to help the Haitian

people and said the U.S. commitment to its hemispheric neighbor will be

unwavering.

" We have to be there for them in their hour of

need, " the president said.

Obama adjusted his Wednesday schedule, canceling a

jobs event in land to better monitor the situation in Haiti.

More

from msnbc.com

Adoptive parents await word on their Haitian children

World Blog: â€˜The saddest place on earthâ€™ | Video

In NYC, anxiety and mourning in quakeâ€™s wake

â€˜Expecting the worstâ€™ at Haiti orphanage

Docs seek to stifle patients' rants on Web sites

Obama's

America: Tell us about nation's changing face

Answer Desk: Donâ€™t look for caps on bank bonuses

NBC News, The

Associated Press and The New York Times contributed to this report.

Â· Discuss

Story On Newsvine

Â· Rate

Story:

View popularLowHigh

Â· Email

Â· Instant Message

Â· Print

Sign In

Emailing: First U.S. vessel arrives at Port-au-Prince - Haiti earthquake- msnbc.com.htm

Recommended Posts

Guest guest

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Join the conversation

Activity